February 8, 2017 Show with Steve Cooley on “A Former Mormon’s Deliverance From the Latter-Day Saints”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host Chris Arnton. Good afternoon

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida and the rest of humanity living on the planet

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Earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arnton, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 8th day of February 2017.

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I am delighted that we have as a guest today for the very first time on Iron Sharpens Iron, Pastor Steve Cooley who is associate pastor of Bethlehem Bible Church of West Boylston, Massachusetts and he co -hosts the

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No Compromise radio program. Today we are going to be discussing his journey out of Mormonism into biblical

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Christianity and more importantly into the saving embrace of the true

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Christ of the scriptures and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron, Steve Cooley.

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Thank you very much, Chris. It's a blessing to be here. Well, I'd like you to let our listeners know something about your upbringing as a child.

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I'm assuming that you were raised in the Mormon faith from infancy, but I don't know that for a fact.

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I just know that you spent over 20 years as a Mormon and then you later converted by God's mercy to biblical

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Christianity, but if you could explain something about your upbringing. Well, I think my mom came under my paternal grandmother's influence.

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She was in the church and my mom wanted to date my dad and I think she joined the church to kind of curry favor and then after they got married and I was born,

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I think I was blessed by someone in the church at about the age of three.

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I was baptized at age eight and then confirmed a member of the church the next day. I became a deacon at the age of 12, a teacher at 14, a priest at 16.

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I was doing all those kind of things and serving in the church and very involved with it.

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In fact, I like to tell people that I actually graduated from seminary twice. The second time was at the

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Master's Seminary, but the first time was in high school because every day before school we would go from 620 in the morning till 710 in the morning for religious instruction at the church and then go to school from there.

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So, I would say that the church basically was my life growing up.

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All my friends or most of my friends and most of my activities stemmed out of the church. Well, I've interviewed quite a number of Mormon converts to evangelical

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Protestantism and many of them, in fact, I think probably all of them that I can remember, said that they actually loved being a

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Mormon. Their conversion had nothing to do with some ugly, hideous event in their lives.

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It had nothing to do with some kind of oppressive cultic leadership that controlled every movement they made or anything like that.

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They thoroughly enjoyed being Mormon. They loved being Mormon. In fact, when they discovered that the

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Mormon faith, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints, was a counterfeit Christianity, they were devastated.

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They faced a frightening journey ahead to leave what they cherished for so many years.

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Now, I don't know if that's the case with you, but tell us something about your attitude towards Mormonism. Well, it's similar in the beginning.

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In other words, I would say everything you said is true. I mean, some of the dearest people

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I've ever known were Mormons. And I mean, I loved any number of families in the world where I grew up, and so many people helped me in so many different ways.

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Even when I got out of the Army, some of the people that I ran into back in Long Beach, because that's where I moved to for a short period of time after I got out of the

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Army. Long Beach, California or Long Island, New York? Long Beach, California. I grew up in Southern California in a town,

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West Covina, California is where I grew up. And ironically, even though I lived in West Covina, I went to Baldwin Park Second Ward, you know, for what that's worth.

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And we had fantastic sports teams, but I digress. I loved the people there.

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And I loved being, and I would agree with that, I loved being a Mormon. There was no, I don't think the first time

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I ever really had any doubts whatsoever, I was probably about 16 or 17. And the problem, and I think your listeners will identify with this, the problem was

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I was sitting on the hood of my Mustang. I had a 69 Mustang. And I was sitting on the hood of it with my one of my friends.

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And I think we were both serving in the priest quorum that we were like, he was the president, and I was his first counselor or something like that.

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And we were just talking about life. And I said, you know, I said, there's one thing that really bothers me.

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I can't really see how I'm going to become a God because I can't ever really seem to stop sinning.

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Wow. It sounds like Martin Luther and the struggle that he went through.

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Well, I was thinking about that earlier today. Yeah, in a sense it is. I mean, I'm no Martin Luther in the sense of the impact of my life, but I certainly had that awareness, that kind of oppressive nature of sin, because in Mormonism, ultimately you are trying to perfect yourself.

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And, you know, Jesus died for your sins. But he leaves you there to, you know, save yourself by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel.

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That's what they would teach. You know, we would say that the gospel is not what you do.

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The gospel is what has been done. But that's not Mormonism. Well, I think that even though we've addressed this topic many times, in fact, after this interview is over, if anybody would like to go to the archive at ironsharpensironradio .com

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and type Mormon in the search engine, you will probably get quite a number of past interviews that I've conducted on Mormonism.

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And there's even more that have yet to be added to that website, because I have the old archive from my old days in New York broadcasting on WNYG and WGBB radio, and that website is no longer working.

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It has been taken down, and we are hopefully going to get all of those interviews eventually incorporated into the new or current

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Iron Sharpens Iron website. But I think that it is in order, obviously, for those of our listeners who are really puzzled by why we're making a big deal out of Mormonism, because they seem like such wonderful Christian people,

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I think we have to make a clear distinction, at least a summary of what

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Mormonism teaches on the major issues of faith in contrast to what we believe the

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Scriptures teach as Bible -believing evangelical Christians. Well, you know, it's funny that you put it that way, because after I first got saved,

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I started a program called, well, I think it's called

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Evangelism Explosion in some places. At Grace Community Church, they called it, uh, Discipleship Evangelism.

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And after I got done with that, some of the leaders of the ministry asked me to come and speak on a

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Saturday morning to them, and to just describe to them what, you know, the key was to reaching

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Mormons. So I started my presentation, and I said, they have a wrong view of God, they have a wrong view of man, they have a wrong view of Scripture, they have a wrong view of sin, they have a wrong view of Jesus.

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You know, and I just went, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. And they said, well, is there one verse? Is there one key verse?

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And I said, no. You know, you've got to walk through all these issues with them, because they're convinced that Mormons are deprived of the truth, but the reality is that they're teaching a false gospel, a gospel that says that God was once like us, that we can become like God, that Jesus was a spirit...

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Well, when people say He was a spirit brother of Lucifer, I cringe a little bit, because that's true, but it doesn't go far enough that what offends me the most is that they teach that He was my spirit brother, you know, that I existed, and that Jesus was the firstborn of the spirit children of the

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God of this earth, but that so was I. I was also there. They teach that, you know, that basically that there's nothing that He did that we can't do, that He wasn't

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God in the flesh, you know, from the eternal God. They don't believe any of that.

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And so, you know, even His death and His resurrection, that satisfies the payment for our sin, they would say, but then the rest of it is left up to us.

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And these are major... I mean, there are more and more contradictions. The whole baptism for the dead, which

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I had done to me when I was 12, marriage,

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I mean, temple marriage is a big deal for them. There are any number of problems.

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They teach that the Bible isn't accurate. They teach that the Bible isn't sufficient. They teach that the

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Holy Spirit isn't a person. On and on and on, the number of divergences from historical and biblical

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Christianity are enormous. And they are very deceptive in the 21st century, and I'm not even going to try to impugn motives to people that I don't know, because they may not view it that way, that they are being intentionally deceptive.

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But the old Mormonism of your grandmother is not the

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Mormonism of the 21st century in as far as the public relations approach and the methodology of evangelism.

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I can remember meeting a Mormon missionary, in fact, inviting a

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Mormon missionary into my living room in the 1980s when I was a brand new Christian. Actually, two

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Mormon missionaries came after I replied to a commercial on TV if I wanted to have a

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Book of Mormon hand -delivered to my home by a Mormon elder. I purposely responded to it so I could evangelize these people, and had probably more zeal than knowledge back then.

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I was a new convert, but I seemed to get the message across very clearly. And the approach that the young Mormon elder had in my living room, he was very extremely polite, but he made it clear that we had different religions.

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When I just recently bumped into some very nice guys in the streets of Carlisle recently, young, hip guys in their early 20s

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I'm assuming, who were extremely friendly, and they were taking a totally different approach in that they were trying to convey a message to me that Mormonism was just a different denomination of Christianity.

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They didn't use that exact terminology, but they were basically saying, in fact, in a very rehearsed way, as if it was something memorized, one of the young men said to me, you've probably heard that Mormons think that they're the only true

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Christians and the only true religion on earth. That's not true. We're Christians just like you. We just have some differences.

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You know, it was like a speech that he gave me, and I informed him that this is a recent phenomenon that was totally absent from Mormon history since its inception in the 19th century.

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But anyway, if you could respond to what I just said, if you confirm with what I'm saying. Yeah, I mean,

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I can remember going to, there was something called Mormon Night at Disneyland during the 70s, and we used to go,

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I was, you know, a kid and then a teenager, and when we would leave, there would be

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Christians outside the parking lot, and basically they would be trying to hand us tracts saying, you know, if you're a

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Mormon, you're going to hell. And we just thought it was weird. We didn't really get it, and shortly after that, there was a

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Calvary Chapel that moved into the area that I lived in, and we just couldn't get the whole idea of Christianity and Mormonism, I mean, those two things just didn't go together.

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I would argue with people against the Trinity all the time. I mean, to me it was self -evident that the

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Trinity didn't exist, you know, and so it was nothing like that. So then to fast forward a little bit, after I get saved,

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I was working in a jail in Los Angeles County, and one of my co -workers was a returned missionary from the

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Mormon Church. And so he was kind of trying, he was coming alongside me the way that you're describing, you know, more this nouveau

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Mormonism, you know, kind of, and I said, well, you're not Christians. I said,

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I know that you're not Christians, because I used to be one of you. And he says, oh, we believe everything you believe.

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And I said, okay. I started, so I just decided to focus on Jesus. And I said, let me ask you this. I said, do you believe that Jesus is

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God? And he said, yes. And I was like, taken aback. I'm going, what? And I go, do you believe that Jesus was always

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God? And he paused for a minute, and he said, yes. And so I said, do you believe that there was ever a time when

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Jesus did not exist? And he got really quiet, and then he said, well, yes,

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I believe that there was a time that Jesus did not exist. And I'm like, then you don't believe in the

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Jesus of the Bible. In fact, one of the things that trips people up is that they very often use the same terminology, but have a different dictionary.

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Glenn Beck, whose political views I very often have complete harmony with, not all the time, but I have a lot of similarities in my points of view with Glenn Beck.

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I tend to be a conservative libertarian in many regards, and I am very happy when

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I hear him commenting on various political issues, because I find myself just saying yes to everything that he is saying, or nearly everything.

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But Glenn Beck has been really leading

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Christians, evangelicals, to believe that he is also an evangelical just like they are.

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Because he very often uses terminology that would make them think that.

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Like, for instance, I can even remember seeing a discussion on the internet that he was having on his blog,

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I'm assuming. I can't remember exactly the forum it was, but Glenn Beck was having a back and forth dialogue on the internet with a friend of mine,

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Deborah Antognano, who is a former Jehovah's Witness who came to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.

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And he was getting irritated that she did not view him as a fellow

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Christian, as a brother in Christ. And he said, look, I believe that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin, lived a perfectly sinless life, and he died for the sins of mankind and rose again and is seated at the right hand of the

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Father. I believe the same thing that you believe. End of story. Now that wasn't verbatim what he said, but it was basically a paraphrasing of what

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I remember him saying. He said something that would make a Christian think that he was in agreement with us about core essentials about the faith.

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But obviously he has got a different dictionary when he is using terms. Even born of a virgin, because the

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Mormon faith teaches that Mary actually had a sexual union with God the

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Father. Did she not, in their theology? Right, but it's a lot of the lesser...I

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guess there's almost a Gnosticism to Mormonism because a lot of the things we wouldn't discuss in a typical,

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I want to call it a worship meeting, in our sacrament meetings is what they were properly called.

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We wouldn't discuss heavy theology. Those were typically just meetings about experiences and how to live a better life and that kind of thing.

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The real theology would go on during the priesthood meetings where there were men only, and even afterwards in the hallways where we would talk about the deeper things, like that, or was

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Jesus married, or all these kinds of questions. Because if you had to be married to get to the celestial kingdom, then certainly

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Jesus had to be married. These kinds of questions and things would come up, but that's not something that would typically be taught or even talked about in a regular sacrament meeting.

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So yeah, I think that virgin birth would have a different meaning, but even the idea of Him being the creator of all things,

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Jesus being the creator of all things, they wouldn't understand it to mean anything other than what we see.

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And so the idea of Jesus being a created being isn't irreconcilable to them with what

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Scripture says Colossians 1 and other places, and they just wouldn't get it.

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When the whole idea of mankind being inherently evil, sinful, the original sin, those kind of things are just absent.

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I mean, it's right in their statement of faith that they believe that all men are going to be punished for their own sins and for Adam's transgressions.

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For Adam's transgression, not for the fall. In other words, the fall has no impact on mankind other than we live in a sinful world, rather than the

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Garden of Eden. No negative impact. Don't they think that that's an actually wonderful event of some kind?

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Yes. Yes. Because without it, we couldn't progress. So it was like Adam kind of took the reins, you know, seized the reins and did the right thing for mankind, which is just exactly the opposite of what the

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Bible says. Now, I was surprised that you were fighting against the

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Trinity as a Mormon because I thought that they used some kind of Trinitarian language. I'm not saying that they actually believe in the historically understood concept of the

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Trinity going back centuries in the great creeds of Christendom, but don't they use some kind of a

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Trinitarian language? Well, what we would say, well, I mean, if you listen to the Articles of Faith, you know, the first article of faith is we believe in God, the

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Eternal Father, and His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost. And you listen to that and you go, well, that sounds vaguely

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Trinitarian. But for example, as a Mormon, I would argue that when

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Jesus got baptized, that's a great evidence against the Trinity, because they would say, here you have, you know, the

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Father in a different place than the Son, and the Holy Spirit descending as a dove, not as a person, but, you know, more like as a force would be their argument, you know, and how can you, how is that compatible with the

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Trinity, they would say. You know, and there's a lot of, to really understand

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Mormons, you have to understand the most, well, two things. One is they have no hermeneutical system.

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In other words, any verse that they want to take out of context is pretty much acceptable.

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You know, they prove text all the time. The second thing is really to get in the mindset of Joseph Smith, and just to understand the,

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I'll use this term, and then explain it, the brilliance of Joseph Smith, which the brilliance of it is he took inexplicable things, you know, the transcendence of God, and brought it down to where, hey,

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God isn't that much better than us. You know, so when I say brilliance, I'm not saying in fact is brilliant, it's just, it just is a way of communicating things and making it seem simple, you know, and God really isn't that much different than us, and we can be like God, and these things are, they sound into, to an unbeliever, sometimes these things can make a lot of sense.

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And obviously, one of the pillar doctrines that we as Christians believe,

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Bible -believing Christians, is the substitutionary death of Christ on Calvary, where he paid the penalty of sin for all his people.

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How would this be a different definition of what

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Mormons believe the death of Christ was all about? Well, I don't think the penalty part,

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I don't think they would have so much a problem with. I think they would come really close to,

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I mean, it's hard to even explain the exact difference. I think the bigger problem would be, you know, an imputed righteousness, because they wouldn't get that at all.

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They wouldn't believe that we need Christ's righteousness because we're going to earn our own. You know, that's the biggest difference.

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And they would, I think that they might have some different nuances about the penalty, the idea of penal substitution, but overall,

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I think they would see his death as payment for sins, but only for those, of course, that are who believe and are baptized.

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You know, baptism is necessary. You know, you can believe all you want, but you have to be baptized either in this life or by proxy, and then accept that proxy baptism in the next life in spirit prison.

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So, I mean, they have this whole, you know, fairness. That's another thing. I mean, really, when

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I talk about Mormonism sort of being an easier to accept religion, it's because it's fair, right?

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If you don't hear the gospel in this life, don't worry about it. You get another chance in the next life.

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You know, all that appointed, you know, it's appointed to men once to die and then to judgment, you know, that's just kind of, well, that's just too strong.

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So, you know, they soften the blow by saying, well, you know, if Aunt Bessie didn't hear the gospel, that's okay.

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She'll get to accept it in the next life. Yeah, my late uncle Donald, who actually wrote a book on my family's ancestry, when he was doing the genealogy research, he was relying heavily upon the genealogical library of the

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Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints because they have the largest genealogical library, I believe, in the world because of that very reason, that they baptized the dead.

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And he was telling me that our ancestors have been baptized, as many as he knew were baptized in proxy by Mormons who were baptized for the dead.

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So, going back to the atonement or the death of Christ, did they believe that it was a propitiatory sacrifice, as we do, that Christ was turning away the wrath of the

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Father from us and taking it upon Himself to save His people from His sins, every single sin?

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Well, I want to say yes, okay, but I can't remember ever,

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I mean, you know, I'm sure this may have come up or whatever, but I cannot remember ever hearing a message about the wrath of God.

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I mean, this is just not a topic that we would, you know, talk about.

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You know, I can remember from seminary in high school, not to be confused with real seminary, but hearing things like, wickedness never was happiness.

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You know, sin makes us momentarily happy, but it ultimately leads to pain and suffering and misery.

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But of course, they don't believe in hell, per se. They have something called the, what is it, what is it, the, well, like what we would call outer darkness, or what do they call it?

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Because there's the celestial, the terrestrial, the telestial, then there's the, oh, the sons of perdition, that's the name of it.

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And these would be, I mean, to get into the sons of perdition, which is something akin to what we would call hell, but to get into the sons of perdition, you have to have a clear, undeniable evidence of the truth, and then actively work against it.

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So an example would be Judas Iscariot, who was with Jesus, saw the miracles, and then undermined it, you know, by betraying

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Jesus. In fact, let's pick up where we left off there. Our email address, if you'd like to join us on the air today, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence, if you live outside the

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USA. If you prefer to remain anonymous, perhaps you are a Mormon, or perhaps your spouse is a

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Mormon, and you just don't want to identify yourself. I understand that, and we will honor your request if you choose to remain anonymous when writing us.

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That's chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

29:40

Don't go away. We will be right back with Steve Cooley and his conversion from Mormonism into Biblical Christianity.

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Welcome back, this is Chris Arms, and if you just tuned in to our program, our guest today for the full two hours is

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Steve Cooley, who is Associate Pastor of Bethlehem Bible Church of West Boylston, Massachusetts, and co -host of the

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No Compromise radio program. We are discussing a former Mormon's conversion to evangelical

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Christianity, and if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail dot com, chrisarnsen at gmail dot com, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail dot com, and we do have a couple of listeners already wanting to have their questions asked, but I'm going to get a little bit more background on Mormonism before I proceed with their questions.

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We were talking about hell prior to the break, and I have heard from some former

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Mormons that only a Mormon apostate is going to hell for eternity.

35:35

Is that true, or what was your understanding of that? Because you came close to saying that, that you have to have a really solid understanding of Mormonism and reject it before going to hell, but do you actually have to be a

35:48

Mormon, or a Mormon apostate, I should say? Yeah, I would say it's even more than that, though.

35:54

For example, I mean, I was sort of hoping that when I wrote, because you have to work to get off the church records, and when

36:03

I wrote the local bishop in California and requested that they remove my name, and I gave my testimony and everything there,

36:12

I was hoping that they would call me in and hold a trial, because as an elder

36:18

I should be subject to a trial, but they didn't do that. But they never wrote back and said, you know, you're in danger of going to hell or anything, which would be the right thing to do if that was true, right?

36:32

Oh, please repent, because you're on your way to hell if you do this, and you don't want to be an apostate for the church.

36:38

But they didn't do anything like that, and I really think, I mean,

36:45

I haven't spent much time reviewing this or researching it, but I would say that my understanding is

36:51

Sons of Perdition are a relative handful of people, and the reason for that, by the way, goes back to their belief in the pre -existence, and because they believe that we existed as spirit children of God before we came here, and by virtue of our supposed faithfulness in the pre -existence, we have earned a certain level of reward after this life, no matter what we do in this life.

37:23

So even somebody like Adolf Hitler would see the lowest level of quote -unquote heaven under the

37:31

Mormon system. It's not a very compelling reason to leave whatever religious system or even way of life that you have and become a

37:41

Mormon if the only people are going to hell are those that really understand and are practicing

37:47

Mormonism and then abandon it, you know what I'm saying? You're putting yourself more in jeopardy by becoming a

37:55

Mormon, it would seem, especially since they believe that a true Mormon can fall out of that and become apostate.

38:05

Now, obviously, you and I believe in apostasy, but we believe that, as Calvinists, we believe that those who apostatize were not truly born -again believers.

38:15

They were false converts. So obviously, even when you become a

38:21

Mormon, you have no guarantee that you always be a Mormon, and so it would seem to me a very poor reason to join them when you're kind of, you know, going to have a good enough eternity anyway if you reject what they teach.

38:38

Well, yeah, I think, you know, it's more the reward system. In other words, you know, the more faithful you are to the

38:47

Mormon faith, they would say, the higher you're going in the afterlife. And when you get to that, when you're talking about the celestial kingdom, that's where they talk about, you know, having plural marriage, having your own planets, you know, this kind of thing.

39:04

So I guess I would, you know, and having your own family sealed to you for all time and eternity.

39:11

So they would say that, you know, faithfulness basically is its own reward. You know, the more faithful you are, the better your reward is.

39:19

Now, a lot of people may have never heard that, but it is true that Mormons believe that if they are faithful Mormons, they will become gods of their own planet in the afterlife.

39:29

Yes. And is that only for male Mormons, or is that also something that female

39:34

Mormons have a promise for? Well, only the males would be, you know, gods.

39:41

The females would be, I guess, goddesses, but they wouldn't have that same creative power.

39:48

And the odd thing to me is, I'm not really sure why women are attracted at all, because ultimately the guys are promised plural marriages, and many wives, you know, it's almost like the

40:01

Islamic, you know, 40 whatever virgins, or 72 virgins, or whatever, they're going to have plural wives up in the highest levels of heaven.

40:12

So I'm not really sure why any woman would be attracted to that portion of the religion, but it's the idea of the togetherness and the forever family, because when you get married in the temple, supposedly you and your wife will spend eternity together, and your children as well, if they are faithful Mormons.

40:33

Now, what in Mormon theology is the difference between Jesus Christ and God the

40:40

Father, and what are the origins of each? Well, the

40:46

God the Father, they would say, has what, you know, they've backed away from this

40:52

Gordon B. Hinckley kind of backed away from this, but they always basically taught us that God was once a man like us, and he was faithful on whatever planet he was on, and, you know, then became a god, and we can do the same thing, eternal progression, kind of, there's an infinite number of gods who then spawned spirit children, and some of them became gods, and so on and so forth.

41:21

So they would say that God, whom they would refer to as Elohim, you know, did that, and that Jesus was the firstborn of his spirit children for this world.

41:37

And we were also among those spirit children, all of us were among those spirit children, and so was

41:44

Lucifer, and Lucifer led a rebellion in that pre -existence, and one -third of the pre -existent children followed him, and those are, you know, they're the ones who were cast out as, you know, demons and that kind of thing.

42:03

So that's how they, you know, one -third of the hosts of heaven fell.

42:09

That's how they see it. And God the Father was a man, just like you and I, who earned his way to godhood.

42:16

Yes, and then Jesus did the same here. He came as a, you know, a mortal, not yet God, and earned his godhood.

42:27

By the way, I have to break in here in case somebody's tuning in late. This is Mormon theology we're talking about, not what we believe.

42:33

Oh no. This is the 180 -degree polar opposite of biblical

42:42

Christianity, and I'm not saying this to mock my Mormon friends and neighbors, but it's just true.

42:50

There is such a stark contrast between Mormonism and biblical

42:56

Christianity that it boggles the mind how anyone could think they are compatible with each other.

43:04

And the Holy Spirit, what is the Holy Spirit, or who, and what do you know the origins of the

43:11

Holy Spirit as far as the Mormons define the Holy Spirit? Yeah, I'm not really clear what his origin is.

43:17

I know that they refer to him as a personage, not quite a full person.

43:25

So, I mean, the pneumatology, shall we say, of the

43:31

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints is a little bit ethereal.

43:36

I mean, it's not really nailed down, at least it wasn't well taught when I was in the Church, and kind of a mystery.

43:43

He was a really treated more as, I would argue, more as a force than as a person.

43:53

And is the Holy Ghost something different in their theology? Well, the Holy Ghost is just, the

43:58

Holy Ghost is the Holy Spirit. It's just they're very much locked into King James language.

44:04

In fact, when I was growing up, everybody prayed in sort of pseudo -King

44:10

James, you know, I mean, we would never, in speech, we would never say, thee and thou, but when we prayed, all of a sudden we became thee and thou people.

44:21

And they very much believe that, you know, the King James version of the Bible, which is certainly beautiful, but they believe it's the best version of the

44:33

Bible, but they would still say, you know, it's riddled with errors. In fact, I have a cousin who,

44:39

I mean, a lot of my family's still in the Church, and I said to him one time, just quoting the

44:46

King James, Matthew 16, 18, and I, you know, upon this rock will my

44:51

Church and the gates of Hades will not stand against it. And I'm just like, one of these two things is true.

44:56

Either Jesus was wrong when he said that, because according to you, the

45:02

Church disappeared for, you know, 1700 plus years, or Joseph Smith was lying when he said he was restoring it.

45:11

So one of those two, you know, you have to, it all comes down to who do you believe, Jesus or Joseph Smith?

45:17

If you believe the words of Jesus, so here's what he said. He said, well, you know, that verse is just wrong.

45:25

And, you know, it's like, next topic. When they don't know how to answer something from the

45:35

Bible, then, you know, that verse is, because it's in their Articles of Faith, that the Bible can be riddled with errors.

45:42

Yeah, but I think, isn't the phrase that the Bible is the Word of God in so much as it has been accurately translated or something like that?

45:49

Yes. And it's interesting that they have a Joseph Smith translation, and they don't even use it.

45:56

That is mind -boggling to me. Right. I mean, if he took the time to do it and to correct it and everything else, you would think that that would be the one that they would use, but they don't.

46:06

Their key primary founding prophet, they don't even use his translation, which at least the general public in Mormonism doesn't use it.

46:18

And so, unless there's anything further that we should bring up about the main tenets of the faith of Mormonism, how they contrast with Scripture, I'm going to start moving into more of the details of your own conversion.

46:31

But one thing that just popped into my head, because you mentioned earlier about God being a creator, don't they really believe that God is not, in its fullest, truest sense of the term, a creator?

46:47

Doesn't he reorganize matter because matter is eternal? Yes, that is correct.

46:52

Matter is eternal, and so are spirit beings. But yeah, they would definitely not have an out -of -nothing ex nihilo.

47:03

They would not believe in that sort of creation that God spoke and everything leapt into existence. They would not believe that.

47:10

And I know that they also believe that God the Father, not Jesus Christ here, the

47:16

God the Father has a body of flesh and blood and bone just like we have.

47:23

And in fact, I heard one of the Mormon presidents in a documentary that I'm going to mention in a minute mocking the

47:34

Westminster Confession of Faith's description of God being spirit. And they believe that that is one of the most hellish teachings that has ever been summoned up from the evil heart and mind of man, is that teaching that God is spirit.

47:53

Which is just shocking, because Jesus clearly said that, right? Yes. So again, it comes down to who do you believe?

48:01

Jesus or the prophet of the church? And I want to promote this video because it's an excellent video that has been created by the

48:12

Christ Presbyterian Church in Magna, Utah, a suburb of Salt Lake City.

48:20

It is a congregation within the Orthodox Presbyterian denomination, and my friend Pastor Jason Wallace created this really masterful documentary.

48:30

And I'm not just saying that because I provide some of my own voiceovers for narration. I'm actually the voice of Brigham Young and a couple of other people in that documentary.

48:41

But it's really a professional, high -quality documentary, and you could view that absolutely free of charge at lds .video.

48:52

lds .video. That's the website, and that is a production of Christ Presbyterian Church, Magna, Utah.

49:00

Their website is gospelutah .org. And we thank

49:07

Pastor Jason Wallace and the congregation of Christ Presbyterian Church for doing such a magnificent job.

49:15

In fact, the premise of this documentary, which is titled An Earnest Plea to Latter -day

49:21

Saints, is that since Joseph Smith condemned all of Christendom as being false with a specific emphasis on Presbyterianism, he basically turned the tables on the

49:40

Latter -day Saints and in defense of themselves, since Joseph Smith, their prophet, targeted them as a false denomination.

49:51

They revealed so many deceptions that were perpetrated by Mormon prophets where they were teaching the public one thing and doing something else and among their own people.

50:08

Even the practice of polygamy, which was the original practice of the

50:16

Mormons before they, under threat of the government, to have their property seized from them and they faced imprisonment, they abandoned that teaching through a convenient revelation from God that that was no longer to be practiced.

50:35

But he cites in this documentary, Jason Wallace cites in this documentary, the writings from Joseph Smith lying that he is a monogamous man married to one wife and it was clear from the historical record that he had already many wives when he was saying that.

50:59

So and you're not talking about, you know, Mormons have used the retort when

51:06

I've brought things up like this. Well you have, you know, you're a

51:13

Baptist. There are Baptist pastors that lie and do all kinds of horrible things. Yeah but they're not my prophet.

51:19

Yeah that's right. And that came to be very clear in a conversation

51:24

I had with a young Mormon in my living room when it came to the racism of Mormonism where it wasn't until, believe it or not folks, until the 1970s when black men could enter into the

51:38

Mormon priesthood. You couldn't even be in the Mormon tabernacle choir at that point, I believe.

51:44

And the reason for that is the loss of tax -exempt status that they faced for their churches and colleges and so on.

51:53

So they had a convenient revelation again that the blacks had equal status with whites.

51:59

But when I brought that up to the young Mormon missionary he said, well what are you talking about? You have Baptists in the

52:05

Ku Klux Klan. And I said, yeah I believe that there will be many Baptists in hell.

52:10

Do you believe Joseph Smith and Brigham Young could possibly be in hell? I mean you're talking about your prophets, not some moron who pretends to be a

52:21

Baptist pastor. That's awesome. But now let's hear about,

52:28

I know that you indicated something about it earlier, but I want to hear more about your early introduction to Biblical Christianity, who these

52:39

Christians were, how this came about, where you started to question your long -held Mormon beliefs.

52:45

It's interesting to me because I really, you know, thinking back even to high school and whatnot,

52:51

I went to a public high school, but I didn't really know anybody who was an outspoken, you know, born -again

52:58

Christian. I had, most of my friends were Mormons, but I had some friends who were Catholic and Jewish and Jehovah Witness.

53:07

But I, you know, I didn't really know any born -again Christians, and it really wasn't until probably, well

53:14

I think it was when I was in the Army that I met my first serious Christian, but I wasn't all that interested in him.

53:22

Christianity didn't really hit me. I had to go, you know, really become disenchanted with Mormonism, which happened in a couple of ways, and it was in my...

53:34

In fact, let's pick up those ways after our next station break. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

53:43

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away, we're going to be right back after these messages with our interview of former

53:50

Mormon Steve Cooley. And before I even go to our messages from our sponsors,

53:58

I want to air for you the last interview. It's a very brief interview with Mike O 'Fallon, who runs

54:08

Sovereign Alliance and Sovereign Cruises, an organization that you will see

54:15

Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, one of my dearest friends, and a frequent guest on Iron Sharpens Iron, although he hasn't been on that frequently lately because of his busy schedule, but somebody that I have known since 1995, when

54:32

I started a decade -long series of debates between Dr. White and Roman Catholic apologists, and many other debates with liberal

54:42

Protestants, leaders in cults or pastors within cults, homosexual activists, and so on.

54:54

We have now an interview with Michael Fallon, who runs Sovereign Alliance, and he's going to tell you more about this organization and the activities that they conduct.

55:06

And this is the last of the interviews that I haven't already aired from the G3 conference, and then we'll be going to some more words from our sponsors, so don't go away.

55:19

Chris Arnzen here again at the G3 conference in Atlanta, Georgia, and I have with me for an interview

55:26

Michael Fallon, the CEO and founder of Sovereign Alliance, and there's a lot of things that go under the umbrella of Sovereign Alliance that we're going to hear about, but it's an honor and privilege to have you for the very first time on Iron Sharpens Iron, Michael Fallon.

55:42

Great to be here with you, Chris. And tell us something about your own personal background in regard to the theology you embrace and how you eventually came to use this passion for what you believe to actually meld it into a wonderful organization that not only provides people with the enjoyment of recreation, but also is able to be a platform or even a pulpit, if you will, to edify the minds of those who are participating in these activities.

56:19

Well, Chris, years ago I was, of course, born a cradle Catholic and raised in the

56:25

Roman Catholic Church, catechized. My entire family has in some way or the other worked for the

56:33

Roman Catholic Church at some point in their lives. But yet the

56:38

Lord really brought me into his fold through a

56:43

Bible study in Galatians when I was pursuing a very attractive Chinese gal that I happened to meet at my gym.

56:50

And she invited me to a Bible study. And being someone who was a pretty regular practicing

56:57

Catholic, I really thought I knew it all. But we got into this Bible study in Galatians and I saw that there was nothing that I could do of my own works.

57:05

Nothing that I did was pleasing to God. Only what he does and in through me would be pleasing to him.

57:12

So in essence, I couldn't take credit for anything that I do. The only thing that I can really rely upon is what the

57:20

Lord has done for me as salvation is all of God and not of me. I come to that realization,

57:26

Chris, that it really shocked and rocked my world. But it sent me on a quest to try to find out more.

57:33

And that introduced me to folks such as Josh McDowell and Norm Geisler in the beginning.

57:40

Unfortunately, I would pick up books by folks like Dave Hunt and right away I knew that, well, that's a giant straw man right there.

57:48

That has nothing to do with the truth. Kind of made me question on whether the

57:53

Protestants had it right or not. But then I remember driving from where I was working at the time as a tennis professional back home after work and this

58:02

Bible Answer Man program came on and there was a debate, I guess, starting that Monday, each day of the week, between Dr.

58:10

James White and Tim Staples. And boy, that really brought me around. So it was a question, you know, and several things in the way the

58:17

Lord worked is that through the Bible study in Galatians, then through the Bible study and the debate with Dr.

58:24

White and Tim Staples, that really helped me to see that there were men out there that were studied, that had answers, that were able to refute a lot of the arguments that I'd heard before from the

58:36

Catholic Church. And through the years then, as I saw that the

58:41

Protestant church that I had joined really didn't know much about church history, they didn't know a lot about their own faith.

58:50

And let alone about the Catholic faith. When I saw this, I decided I would try to put together a conference and use the funds from a cruise that we put together with the same speakers, one of which was

59:05

Dr. White, to see if we could put this on without using any funds from the church.

59:11

And we pulled it off and we kept on pulling that off until we started expanding into other things and actually became a company.

59:18

As many years now, we have several different companies that do conferences, conventions, events, concerts, but then also travel events, cruises, tours, especially those that have kind of a didactic flavor to them, teaching.

59:35

So we work with Dr. R .C. Sproul, with Dr. James White, Tom Askell and the founders,

59:41

Dr. Albert Moeller and Southern Seminary. So we've had an opportunity to really work with my heroes. And that's always exciting.

59:49

Yeah, praise God for that. What events do you have on the horizon that you care for our listeners?

59:55

Well, Dr. White is going to be doing a tour coming up in Germany, and that'll be starting in Berlin, Wittenberg, Erfurt, Eisenach, Eisleben, and then finally ending in Frankfurt, but then an extension that can then take you into Calvin's Geneva at the end, if you so choose.

01:00:14

But in each one of those stops, you look at Erfurt, that's of course where Luther was in the monastery and where he performed his first mass.

01:00:23

And then you end up in Eisenach, where Wartburg Castle is, where he composed the

01:00:29

New Testament in German. And then of course, Eisleben, where he was born and where he died.

01:00:37

So all of these different spots along with Heidelberg will be included in the tour, and we'll be taking time in each one of these spots, making sure that we don't just see, take a picture, but really have teaching while we're there as well.

01:00:52

That's one event that's coming up. We have another event with Ligonier Ministries, where we'll be taking a river cruise ship from Prague all the way to Wittenberg, and then staying there for another convention in Wittenberg with Ligonier Ministries.

01:01:07

Al Mohler will be with us. We will have Dr. Steve Lawson, Dr. Bob Godfrey, men such as that.

01:01:15

So those are really exciting and coming up very soon. Now, the last event that you mentioned involves a cruise.

01:01:22

Do all of these upcoming events that you specifically mentioned involve cruises? No, most are tours.

01:01:29

The Elbe River cruise that we're doing is on a small river cruise ship, and that's a great experience if you've never done it before.

01:01:36

We only have a few cabins left on that, but that one will be more or less the cruise ship is both your boutique hotel and your bus taking you right to the center of the city.

01:01:47

So it's exciting. It's a great way to travel. You don't get out in the ocean at all. You're right there on the

01:01:52

Elbe River. It's very intimate in the way that it's done. It's exciting. Now, other than the fact that you're already orchestrating events that perhaps have come through your own creativity and context, let's say a listener happens to be a pastor of a church or perhaps the president of a parish church organization, or just a creative and ambitious person who says, you know,

01:02:17

I'd like to run a cruise of some kind and gather together some speakers that I know and et cetera.

01:02:22

Is there a way for Sovereign Cruises or Sovereign Alliance to work with such an individual or group or church?

01:02:28

Oh yeah. We take groups, as we say, anywhere from 20 to 20 ,000.

01:02:34

So it's quite a large range. And a lot of times some of the best experiences that we have are with people that have 20 to 40 folks that we can really carve up something especially for them in the way that the pastor wants to have it done.

01:02:49

With an emphasis, let's say, on teaching and history, whether that be, we're putting one together right now for Dr.

01:02:55

Pratt out of Reformed Theological Seminary, that will be both Israel and then as well the journeys of Paul.

01:03:03

So we're going to have an opportunity to do Israel, then head up and do Athens, Corinth, Thessaloniki.

01:03:11

So both, you know, a tour and cruise combination. But to be able to do it and have the emphasis that that particular teacher, pastor, theologian, wants to emphasize.

01:03:22

Well, please make sure you give our listeners all of the contact information you care to provide. Sure. It's Sovereign Alliance.

01:03:29

That's www .sovereignalliance .com or you can reach us at 877 -768 -2784.

01:03:37

And any one of our extensions for one of our kind folks at www .sovalliance

01:03:46

.com. Well, thank you so much,

01:03:52

Michael Fallon. Thank you for the time. And I look forward to perhaps having you back in the future and have you give a report on some of these events after they occur.

01:04:00

Sounds great. Thank you, sir. God bless you, brother. You too. Iron Sharpens Iron Radio is sponsored by Harvey Cedars, a year -round

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01:07:38

Welcome back, this is Chris Arnzen, if you just tuned us in. Our guest today for the full two hours, with a little less than an hour to go, is

01:07:45

Steve Cooley, Associate Pastor of Bethlehem Bible Church of West Boylston, Massachusetts, and co -host of No Compromise Radio.

01:07:54

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If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com, chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

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when you click support. We are now back to discuss a former

01:09:48

Mormon's conversion to evangelical Christianity with our guest Steve Cooley, and before the break, Steve, you were getting into your early introduction to Bible -believing

01:09:59

Christianity. You said that you didn't really know a lot of born -again Christians and so on. If you could pick up where you left off there.

01:10:06

Yeah, I think really, I'll just kind of skip ahead. I think what really happened ultimately was

01:10:13

I became disenchanted with the Mormon Church, and again, not because of the people.

01:10:19

It was never the people. But we lived in an area out in the desert in Los Angeles County, and at one point there were five congregations meeting in our building, which you could just imagine, it just doesn't take long if a congregation, you know, if there are five of them in one building and you're each supposed to meet for two and a half hours a

01:10:44

Sunday, things were getting a little busy there. And so it was obvious that the

01:10:49

Church needed a new building there, but they wouldn't do it because our ward, you know, whatever the number was, they had a specific number of full tithe pairs we had to have, and because we were, like, just shy of that, they wouldn't build a new building.

01:11:05

And so week after week after week we got messages about tithing and tithing and tithing and tithing.

01:11:13

Well, I knew it wasn't, you know, the Church wasn't short of money. They just didn't, they weren't going to do it for, you know, reasons that had nothing to do with anything good.

01:11:23

So that bothered me. Then I read a book about the so -called Mormon murders.

01:11:31

The... Mountain Meadows Massacre. Yeah. No, no, it was the

01:11:36

Salamander Letter. Oh, yeah. A series of forgeries done by Mark Hoffman, which ultimately ended with Hoffman blowing up, like, a bishop or something.

01:11:48

I remember that. Was that in the 80s or 90s? I remember that. Yes. And what struck me, though, was that,

01:11:53

I mean, the whole book was fascinating, but what struck me was at the end, Gordon B. Hinckley basically holding a press conference and denying, you know, certain aspects of the

01:12:07

Church's contact with Mr. Hoffman, but it was all true. And what bothered me the most was the fact that the

01:12:14

Church would buy this Salamander Letter, which, by the way, just for your listeners here, the idea was that instead of Joseph Smith being led to the golden plates from which he allegedly derived the

01:12:28

Book of Mormon, that instead of being led there by an angel, he was led there, according to this letter, by a white salamander.

01:12:38

And so the Church bought this basically to suppress it.

01:12:44

And they should have known, if they actually believed Joseph Smith, they should have known that it had to be a fraud, right?

01:12:50

You would think. Yes, so that bothered me a lot, that they would buy it. Why spend money on it, right?

01:12:56

Why not just expose it as a fraud? So that bothered me, but, you know, it was just a variety of things.

01:13:03

Plus, again, the weight of my own sin and understanding that there really was no answer for it.

01:13:10

I had to fix myself, basically. I had to live the Gospel. I had to be the good news.

01:13:17

And my life just kind of unraveled. And eventually, like I said, I was on Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, and while I was in patrol,

01:13:25

I started seeing a department psychologist, because I was just getting depressed. I couldn't control my life.

01:13:32

I couldn't understand why I couldn't control my life. And he suggested that I need to go to a 12 -step meeting, and not for alcoholics, but just something called codependency.

01:13:46

And so I went, and, you know, one night they were talking about the higher powers, and as we went around the room talking about who our higher power was that we were turning our life over to, it was funny and sad to me at the same time, because people were saying things like, my higher power is

01:14:05

God. And I thought, okay. And the next person would say, my higher power is this group. Next person would say, my higher power is a part of my brain that I've designated to be my higher power.

01:14:22

Now, right then, see what you did. You can't do that in a 12 -step meeting, right? I actually have done it at a 12 -step meeting.

01:14:29

I'm a person who's been delivered out of alcoholism, and I was a part of a group session with a psychologist when

01:14:38

I was in a rehab years ago, and the leader, the counselor, was saying things that I couldn't control myself.

01:14:46

In fact, one point I said to her, I think it's ridiculous to believe that a chair could be

01:14:54

God, and she said, oh, you can't have a chair as your God. It has to be something living like a tree.

01:15:01

So I said, okay, so then you cut the tree down and make a chair out of it. Is it still a God? Wow. That's like straight out of Isaiah, huh?

01:15:09

Right. So I left the meeting that night, and I just thought to myself, because what

01:15:15

I did, my cheeks were sore by the time I left that meeting, because what I would do instead of laughing was

01:15:22

I would bite super hard on my cheeks to keep myself from laughing, inflicting a little pain instead, and when she said that,

01:15:29

I really did want to burst out laughing, but I didn't, and I was fairly proud of myself for that.

01:15:35

Anyway, I went home, and I just thought, you know, I don't know who God is.

01:15:41

I know there is a God, because in my mind, there had to be a God to punish the really bad people, right? That wasn't me, by the way.

01:15:50

It would be the people that I arrested, you know, the people who abused children, the people who just did horrible things.

01:15:58

And so I thought, well, who do I know that seems like they know God? Well, there was one

01:16:03

Christian I worked with, and so I went to him, and I said, you know, do you still have that Bible study for police officers?

01:16:11

And he looked at me, because I'd always given him such a hard time. He looked at me, and he said, what's the punchline?

01:16:18

You know, come on, you're going to make a joke out of my faith again. What's the punchline? And I said, no. And I told him about the 12 -step meeting, and I told him,

01:16:25

I said, I went home just thinking I know there's a God, and I don't know who He is, and it seems like you do.

01:16:32

And so he, you know, his countenance just totally changed, and he said, well, yeah, we still have that.

01:16:38

You can come. And it was quite a process from that point until the

01:16:44

Lord saved me. But, you know, and also some, I was back in the jails by now, and working in the jails, and some of the chaplains there were, almost all of them came from Grace Community Church in Los Angeles, where MacArthur, John MacArthur is the pastor.

01:17:04

And so I would talk to them a little bit. Instead of, I used to, like, be a human obstacle for these guys, because I knew they were wasting time, and they had nothing good to offer these guys, and, you know, et cetera, et cetera.

01:17:16

Now I found myself asking these guys Bible questions, listening to them, you know, and really wanting to find out more.

01:17:24

And eventually that led me to read the Bible on my own. And as I read

01:17:32

Isaiah chapter 9, verse 6, a verse that's typically on Christmas cards, right, but when

01:17:40

I got to the part where it says, wonderful counselor, he should be called wonderful counselor.

01:17:45

And I just thought, it amazed me, because I thought, I have a counselor. I have a therapist.

01:17:52

I have a psychologist that I go see, and he doesn't know me. And he gives me sometimes really bad advice.

01:18:01

And I thought, Jesus knows everything about me, and he loves me anyway.

01:18:08

And that idea, you know, of him intimately knowing everything about me just blew me away.

01:18:16

Because I thought, I remember thinking to myself, I don't even like me. You know, I don't even like who

01:18:21

I am. I'm ashamed of who I am. And the idea that Jesus would go to the cross and die for me was overwhelming to me.

01:18:32

It just, it smashed me. I mean, it was just, a lot of people would think, well, that's beautiful that, you know, you think of God's love that way.

01:18:41

No, to me it was just, it was humbling, because I thought, I don't deserve that.

01:18:48

And, you know, when I heard the gospel, when I believed the gospel, it was, it became everything to me.

01:18:57

And it really did change my life. If you could, this may seem like a very simple question, but there are many people over the years who have submitted questions for my guests to Iron Sharpens Iron who are not even

01:19:11

Christians, some even Muslim. If you could please summarize what the true gospel is. Well, the true gospel is,

01:19:18

I would say it this way, that God is holy and just, that He owns everything, that He gets to set the rules, that He's made the rules very clear for us in His law, and that we break

01:19:32

His law, we sin, we violate His law, we violate His standards. And because He's holy and just,

01:19:40

He's going to punish every single sin. And the fact is that there's nothing

01:19:45

I can do to make up for my sin. So I stand before Him, ultimately, condemned.

01:19:52

I have nothing to offer Him. The good news is that God knew that. And the

01:19:58

Father sent His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, eternally God, into the world.

01:20:06

He became, or He took on the form of a man. He took on human flesh while remaining

01:20:13

God. He also took on an additional nature as man, and He obeyed the law perfectly.

01:20:20

He did everything that He was supposed to do, and He never did anything that He wasn't supposed to do. He never had an unclean thought.

01:20:27

He never did anything outside of God's perfect will. And then

01:20:34

He went to the cross voluntarily, died sacrificially for my sins, was raised on the third day, and it's because of Him, because of that payment, that I can be seen by the

01:20:52

Father as innocent. And then more than that, He imputed the righteousness of Christ, His obedience to me, so that when

01:21:01

God looks at Jesus on the cross, He sees my sin. And when

01:21:07

He looks at me now, He sees Christ's righteousness. Not that I am righteous in and of myself, but that I have, in Christ, been granted

01:21:17

His righteousness. And it's because of that that I will go to heaven, not because of anything

01:21:25

I've done, but because of what Jesus did. Now, what eventually led you to Bethlehem Bible Church, where you are now an associate pastor?

01:21:35

Well, after I got saved, I started, and you'll laugh at this, I started going to a

01:21:41

Bible study that's what I call the anti -MacArthur Bible study at MacArthur's Church. Because after the teaching was done, they would just go after MacArthur all night and Phil Johnson, and anyway...

01:21:58

Were these actual members of the... Yes. The man was a deacon. He was also my fundamentals of faith.

01:22:04

It took years, but they finally got rid of him. But they asked him to go to another church. But anyway, so I'm at that study for a while, and it was all eschatology all the time.

01:22:14

Literally the LA Times in one hand, and the Bible in the other. And I just, I wasn't learning anything.

01:22:21

And so I, again, was working one night at the jail, and a man came in and was trying to teach to some inmates, and we had a riot in the jail.

01:22:36

And so we were on lockdown, and he wound up just talking to me. And as I listened to him and talking about the sovereignty of God and all these other things that I'd never heard of,

01:22:45

I just thought, well, this is really interesting. And he, eventually, he said, you know, would you like to talk some more?

01:22:53

You know, like, after your shift, I'm sure. And so we became friends, and he started discipling me, and he went to Mike Ebendross Bible Study.

01:23:04

And so we started, my wife and I started going to Mike Ebendross Bible Study, and Mike is the senior pastor here at Bethlehem Bible Church.

01:23:11

Well, back then, Mike was, you know, just taught a Bible study in Los Angeles, was a deacon at Grace Community Church, and he was also a seminary student.

01:23:22

He was just wrapping up his studies. But I started going there. We started going there every week and learning from him, and we were really blessed to be going there, because he just handled the scriptures really well.

01:23:35

And after he left, he left in 97, came out here to Massachusetts.

01:23:41

After he left, we went and visited him that summer, and it was probably six or eight months after we visited here that I thought, you know what, because I'd been reading

01:23:54

Lorraine Bettner, I'd been reading all kinds of things, and I just thought, you know what, I really want to go to seminary.

01:24:00

And so I enrolled in the seminary and graduated in 2002, did a couple more years, retired there, and when

01:24:09

I entered into the seminary, Mike said, you know, if we have a space here at the church, we'd love to hire you.

01:24:16

And so, lo and behold, in the providence of God, that all came to pass, and I came out here in 2004.

01:24:23

So I've been here ever since. And here is West Boylston, Massachusetts. Tell us something more specifically about Bethlehem Bible Church.

01:24:32

Well, Bethlehem Bible Church, we're difficult to find, because we look like an abandoned pizza hut.

01:24:43

It is a place, I mean, we're so blessed. I mean, we go through, right now,

01:24:51

Mike is teaching through Hebrews, and when I preach... By the way, being a native New Yorker and a lover of real

01:24:57

New York pizza, I think all pizza huts should be abandoned. Nice.

01:25:06

There goes that sponsor. Yeah, well we, yeah, you know, the building was built like 25 years ago, and it just kind of, you know, it was voluntary labor and all that, and it serves its purpose, you know, there's no question about that, but it's not the building, it really is the people.

01:25:27

We're, you know, I mean, we're, I guess we can't call ourselves a small church anymore, we're in that kind of intermediate range, but we're just blessed.

01:25:37

I mean, we've been, over the years, we've had James White come out for a few conferences, we've had

01:25:44

Steve Nichols was here, you know, for a conference.

01:25:50

We've had a lot of, Robert Raymond was here for a conference.

01:25:57

We've just been blessed with a lot of brothers who've come out, and Steve Lawson a couple times, you know, so...

01:26:06

Every one of them have been guests, except for Robert Raymond. And he won't be now, but...

01:26:11

Yes, of course. Yeah, but he's such a dear man. Brought his wife, and we just really enjoyed having them, and...

01:26:20

People are wondering, he's in glory for eternity. Yes, yes. We're Baptists, we're

01:26:27

Reformed in our soteriology. I think you'd find that we're, you know, pretty close to where you are in almost everything.

01:26:37

We'd still be pre -mill, but that's about it. Historic pre -mill, or...? No, we're still just...

01:26:45

We're a little bit leakier than MacArthur, but we're still Dispensationalists. Huh, interesting. That's interesting, because you're confessionally

01:26:52

Reformed with the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, and so you are the first Dispensationalist congregation

01:27:00

I have heard of that adheres to the 1689. Well, there might be one or two more.

01:27:07

I think that, you know, there are a few of us, but we just... I mean, when

01:27:13

I first got there, you know, Mike had me edit the 1689 and just kind of, you know, take out a lot of stuff, and then, you know,

01:27:20

I think it was probably about a year ago, he just said, uh, forget it, let's just go with the 1689. By the way, one of my dearest friends and largest sponsors of Iron Sharpens Iron, Pastor Ron Glass of Wading River Baptist Church on Long Island, is a thoroughgoing

01:27:38

Calvinist and Dispensationalist, and he knows that I am not, but still loves the program enough to be one of my most faithful and enthusiastic supporters.

01:27:50

Well, because it's really, when you get down to it, like what we're talking about today, it's the gospel.

01:27:57

I mean, my own conviction is that I think eschatology, I wouldn't even call it, I don't even think of it as a secondary issue, because I think anybody who thinks that they have every aspect of eschatology correct is probably going to be a little surprised when it actually happens.

01:28:15

So, but soteriology is the key, how people get saved, the gospel.

01:28:21

And, you know, what brings somebody out of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day

01:28:27

Saints or out of just outright paganism, it's the gospel. It's the realization that they stand undone before a holy

01:28:36

God. They're like, you know, Isaiah, in Isaiah chapter 6, they just, I'm an unclean man who lives among unclean people,

01:28:42

I have an unclean lips, and I have no hope. And it is only the good news that Jesus Christ alone saves sinners, and that he lived and died so that we might be justified before a holy

01:28:59

God. That's the key. Amen. And for those of our listeners who want to learn more about Bethlehem Bible Church, you can go to bbcchurch .org,

01:29:14

bbcchurch .org. It seems like there's too many c's in that URL, but it is bbcchurch .org.

01:29:24

And we're going to go to our final break right now, and we're going to go to some of our listeners who wrote in questions, and you could also join them if we have time, at chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:29:36

c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Steve Cooley and the answers to your questions,

01:29:45

God willing. Iron Sharpens Iron welcomes

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01:33:08

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01:33:14

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Join us this Saturday at 12 noon Eastern Time for a visit to the Pastor's Study, because everyone needs a pastor.

01:33:27

Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with a little less than a hour to go is

01:33:35

Steve Cooley, Associate Pastor of Bethlehem Bible Church of West Boylston, Massachusetts, and co -host of No Compromise Radio.

01:33:43

We have been discussing his conversion out of Mormonism into evangelical

01:33:48

Christianity, of which, of course, we would believe is biblical Christianity, the only true

01:33:54

Christianity. And if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

01:34:01

Before I go to some of those questions from our listeners, Steve, tell us something about No Compromise Radio.

01:34:09

Well, we started just broadcasting locally in our area, and then, you know, we got on the internet and just sort of took off, but I'm on Tuesday.

01:34:21

That's hence the Tuesday guy thing. Monday is a sermon for Mike. Tuesday is he and I talking about current issues and evangelicalism.

01:34:32

Then he does a Wednesday interview and a Thursday book review, and Friday he talks about some other topics.

01:34:38

So people can go to nocompromiseradio .com and subscribe to the podcast there.

01:34:46

I mean, it's interesting to me now with the internet, people listen, you know, in all sorts of places,

01:34:52

Asia and Australia and all around the world. It's fascinating to get email from,

01:34:58

I had an email from someone from Australia asking about finances. Yes, Iron Sharpens Iron has listeners all over the world, including

01:35:08

Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, Denmark.

01:35:15

We had at least one listener from Japan years ago write an email to me after she heard an interview on the

01:35:23

Moonies that I conducted while in New York. She was a former Moonie who had come to the saving knowledge of Christ as a result of listening to Dr.

01:35:32

James R. White, actually, on the internet. And she unfortunately was having a really difficult time in Japan finding a biblically faithful church because less than 1 % of the population in Japan is

01:35:47

Christian. It's not easy to find a Bible -believing church. But we have listeners all over the place and all over the

01:35:54

United States. I've heard from every state so far, except Hawaii.

01:35:59

For some reason, I've never heard from a Hawaiian listener, but I've heard from Alaskan listeners and other people from other states.

01:36:07

But well, let me go to some of the listener questions. We have RJ in White Plains, New York, who wants to know,

01:36:15

What was the reaction of your Mormon family, friends, and fellow congregants? Have any of them disowned you or shunned you in any way?

01:36:25

Have any of them followed you into your new faith in Christ? RJ, that's a great question.

01:36:32

Actually, my brother was saved first. It's interesting because he, unlike me,

01:36:38

I did not go on a mission. He went on a full -time mission. And he prided himself on reading the

01:36:45

Bible so that he could present the Mormon gospel using the Bible only.

01:36:51

And so he would read the Bible every single day. And it kept raising issues for him.

01:36:57

And so eventually, he left the Mormon church, got saved. But has it raised issues for me?

01:37:04

The answer is, honestly, not really so much. In fact, over the last couple years, four years ago,

01:37:12

I conducted my father's funeral. This past year, one of my uncles died. And both times,

01:37:18

I was blessed to be able to preach the gospel at their funeral. And in each case, you know, there were a lot of LDS Mormon people there.

01:37:28

And every single time, I mean, it bothered me. I tried to really ramp it up with my uncle at my uncle's funeral, to not necessarily to offend them, but to make it clear that we were talking about different things when it comes to the gospel.

01:37:46

But so far, no, they've been very encouraging. Overall, I think they think that we're on the same side.

01:37:52

I'm just a little misguided. And that's kind of the old -school Mormon view, which is

01:37:58

Mormons, we, they should, they feel compassion for us because we just don't have all the truth is how they would see it.

01:38:06

We would look at it and say, you're just deceived. You know, you're believing in salvation by works.

01:38:12

But they've done such a good job in redefining terms and other things that they can sit there and listen and be convinced in their own minds that they're more or less hearing what they already believe.

01:38:24

Well, guess what, RJ? You have won a book, not by my guest, Steve Cooley. I don't know if you've written a book yet,

01:38:31

Steve. Not yet. But it has nothing to do with the subject today. Well, at least not in regard to Mormonism.

01:38:38

It is by someone that Steve actually mentioned earlier as having conducted a conference at the

01:38:45

Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Stephen J. Nichols, who is the president of Reformation Bible Church in Sanford, Florida, which is the

01:38:53

Bible church founded by R .C. Sproul and Ligonier Ministries. Ligonier Ministries has blessed my heart more than you can imagine by recently informing me that I am one of their very favorite programs on the air.

01:39:09

And they shipped me a number of these books to give away when I saw fit to listeners who submitted questions to our guests.

01:39:18

So you're getting a free copy of A Time for Confidence, Trusting God in a

01:39:23

Post -Christian Society by Dr. Stephen J. Nichols. Please give us your full mailing address,

01:39:29

RJ, and we'll get that off to you. Compliments of not only the publishers,

01:39:34

Reformation Trust, the publishing arm of Ligonier Ministries, but also compliments of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com.

01:39:43

cv for Cumberland Valley, bbs for Bible Book Service .com, who ship out all of our winners the

01:39:50

Bibles and books that they win by submitting questions. We also have another person with a middle initial

01:39:59

J. We have CJ from Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who wants to know, do you believe it is possible for someone to be a

01:40:07

Mormon and yet a born -again believer? I'm not saying a Mormon who actually understands thoroughly their doctrine, but somebody who may have been caught up in the religion somehow, naive to what they believe, and unconsciously believing in the true gospel, not knowing that it is different from the

01:40:25

Bible's gospel. Well, CJ, I think that's a good question, too, because my brother and I often wrestle with that because we love so many

01:40:35

Mormons. So many of them have been integral in our lives, especially when we were younger and we had great difficulty at home, and just the number of people that just poured out their lives for us.

01:40:49

So we want that to be the case, but I think the way you phrase it is a good way to look at it, because if they actually understand what

01:40:58

Mormon doctrine is, no would be the answer.

01:41:04

You know, so my hope would be that they're just confused, and it's such a great community.

01:41:11

I mean, if you could get to heaven by works or by being nice, then all the

01:41:18

Mormons would be, or a lot of Mormons would be going to heaven, because they are really, by and large, wonderful, loving, kind people.

01:41:30

But the doctrine is ultimately damning, and that's the problem.

01:41:36

So, you know, it's possible what you suggest, I guess, because like I was saying earlier,

01:41:42

I don't think you can go to a sacrament meeting and really hear much Mormon doctrine. It's always about some missions trip or some other experience that someone's had.

01:41:52

Very rarely do they get into doctrine in those kind of meetings.

01:41:58

CJ, you've also won a Time for Confidence, Trusting God in a

01:42:03

Post -Christian Society by Stephen J. Nichols, and we hope you enjoy that. We have a former

01:42:10

Mormon who is a friend of mine, actually. She has been a guest on Iron Sharpens Iron a number of times.

01:42:18

She's a published author and has a doctorate in theology. Her name is Latane C. Scott, and she is from Albuquerque, New Mexico, and has several questions for you.

01:42:32

Her first question, I usually don't take more than one question from a listener, but these are very good.

01:42:38

And since she has experienced a similar journey to you, I thought I'd ask all three. Latane asks,

01:42:44

What is the biggest challenge you've faced in trying to share the gospel with Mormon friends? I think the biggest challenge, and by the way,

01:42:54

I've read, I can't think of the name of her book. Mormon Mirage? Yes, and I really like it.

01:43:00

I really do. It's really good. That's an excellent book. Classic. The biggest challenge,

01:43:06

I think, is getting them to, well, I would say, get over Joseph Smith.

01:43:13

You know, that's first of all. I think if you really want to undermine somebody's confidence in Mormonism going after Joseph Smith, or giving them the resources to go after him themselves is a good way.

01:43:28

But I mean, just the biggest challenge, I guess, well, the biggest challenge for me was understanding the

01:43:35

Trinity. I think I understood, or I wanted to believe in Christianity for quite a while.

01:43:41

It was the Trinity that I really had to grapple with and come to grips with.

01:43:48

The hardest thing, I think, in witnessing to former Mormons or to Mormons now, I would say is just getting them to understand the

01:43:57

Bible and rely on the Bible alone, because that is the key, right?

01:44:05

We want to give them Scripture and getting them to believe that Scripture is, in fact, I remember once witnessing to a

01:44:11

Mormon and having him tell me, you know, isn't it great that we have a prophet who hears from God and that whole line?

01:44:20

And I looked at him and I said, no, isn't it great that there's a God who gave us

01:44:26

His Word and is powerful enough to preserve it even until today, no matter what attacks men may make against it?

01:44:34

And that's the greatness of God. That's the power of God. That the Bible has withstood hundreds of years of, you know, misinterpretations or whatever, you know, men trying to keep it from the

01:44:48

Roman Church, chaining it up so that you couldn't read it. And yet, the power of the

01:44:54

Bible is such that when people read it and when the Holy Spirit illumines their minds, they believe.

01:45:00

So, we always have to go back to Scripture. So, that's kind of a long answer, but there you go. And Latane's next question for you is, which book of Scripture had the biggest impact on you when leaving

01:45:12

Mormonism? Well, I think initially it was Isaiah, like I said there. But I think for years, and I'm preaching the

01:45:20

Gospel of John now for years, it's just been John because of the really careful theology.

01:45:28

In fact, I think in John chapter 1, in studying that, you know, the eternality of Jesus just basically screams out of John chapter 1.

01:45:40

The inability, you know, Mormonism is all about free will, but the inability of man to respond.

01:45:47

You know, John chapter 6, when Jesus says, no one can come to me unless the

01:45:52

Father draws him. Well, what does that mean? It means no one can. No one has the ability. There is no such thing as free will.

01:46:01

So, I would say John more than any other book. There's no better Calvinist tract than the

01:46:08

Gospel of John. In fact, I've seen the Gospel of John in tract form on its own, and I think it's an excellent summary of biblical teaching.

01:46:16

It's just... Amen. And of course, one of the most powerful areas showing election in John 10 where Jesus says that those who are not believing upon him are not of his sheep because his sheep hear his voice and they know him and they follow him.

01:46:38

Right. Just a quick word right on that. You know, Mormons take the verse out in John chapter 10 where it says, other sheep

01:46:45

I have that are not of this fold. That's one of the ways that they use to justify, you know, that Jesus came to America.

01:46:55

And I'm like, you know, there's just no way to read that except for to do their own little eisegesis, you know, to just inject that meaning into it and to take it out of its context.

01:47:07

So, anyway. Yes, it's just so clear that you don't become a sheep by believing.

01:47:13

You believe because you already are a sheep. And lastly, Latane asks, what changes do you see taking place in Mormonism lately?

01:47:23

Well, we did mention one earlier about the new approach to evangelism, the softer view of the distinctions between Mormons and evangelicals as just being another denomination kind of an approach, which is a stark contrast from their earlier history, not even that long ago.

01:47:43

But if you could, anything else that you could think of? Well, I've been really surprised by the—I'll use this term and then again

01:47:51

I'll explain it—the liberalization of Mormonism. Yeah. What I mean by that is, like, the idea of someone like a

01:47:58

Harry Reid being a Mormon and, you know, being in favor of abortion and, you know, attacking

01:48:06

Mitt Romney the way he did. All those things were just kind of like—those were mind -blowing for me.

01:48:12

You know, and now to have, like I said, I have a cousin who's a Mormon and a ardent liberal

01:48:20

Democrat, you know, who says, well, yes, abortion's bad, but what the

01:48:25

Republicans do is worse. And so all these things are just—it's just odd to me.

01:48:31

And in fact, they're going into—they're making allowances for homosexuality and transgenderism.

01:48:38

And so there's a real, not just a political liberalization, but a theological liberalization where they're kind of letting more things go.

01:48:48

You know, it's not such a big deal. Yeah, I could not understand how Mitt Romney could possibly be a

01:48:53

Mormon in good standing or even—did I say Mitt Romney? I meant to say Harry Reid.

01:48:59

But even Mitt Romney, though, in his earlier years before his race for president, he was very liberal in many things.

01:49:09

Yes. That's how he became the governor of Massachusetts. Yep. And even

01:49:15

Marie Osmond, you know, I know that she's been divorced a number of times, and this is not to have some kind of Pharisaic attitude towards divorced people.

01:49:25

My late wife was divorced before I married her. I have no sinister view of divorced brothers and sisters, but their religion is quite a different matter when it comes to temple marriages and so on.

01:49:39

Yeah, it used to be quite a big deal for someone to get divorced, but now, you know, because of my upbringing,

01:49:48

I have a lot of friends that are still in the Mormon church. It's surprising to me how many of them are on now their second or third marriage or whatever.

01:49:59

I remember a good friend I had, he got divorced many years ago, and I was talking to his mom, and I said, well, kind of what happened?

01:50:07

I mean, they were married in the temple. How could they possibly get divorced? And she just sort of shrugged and said, well, it didn't work out.

01:50:14

It was never that way when I was a kid. You know, it was just like, you got married in the temple, and that was it, unless, you know, there was adultery.

01:50:22

That was just it. There was no divorce. There was no talk of divorce. So it really, you know, it's become a lot more liberal a religion in those kind of ways than it used to be.

01:50:37

It used to be very much a fundamentalist religion, and it's not that way anymore.

01:50:44

Right. Well, thank you so much, Latane. Keep listening to Iron Sharpens Iron. Looking forward to your return as a guest.

01:50:50

For those of you wanting to get a hold of The Mormon Mirage, which was a book that our guest

01:50:57

Steve Cooley was complimenting just moments ago, you could go to latane .com,

01:51:05

L -A -T -A -Y -N -E .com, and there is an updated version of that book,

01:51:10

The Mormon Mirage, which is a classic book on Mormonism and other things. And Latane is also going to be a part of a new book by Kriegel, where there are contributors to the book who are all former

01:51:26

Mormon individuals who are converted to Christianity, biblical Christianity, who have their doctorates in theology.

01:51:33

I don't know the title of it yet, and it's not out in print yet, but that's something to keep your eye open for.

01:51:41

And I look forward to hearing from Latane again in the future. And by the way,

01:51:46

Latane, you're getting a free copy of A Time for Confidence, Trusting God in a

01:51:51

Post -Christian Society by Dr. Stephen J. Nichols, President of Reformation Bible College in Sanford, Florida.

01:51:58

I'd like you to now close with about four minutes of uninterrupted time where you could leave our listeners with what you most want etched in their hearts and minds before they leave this program.

01:52:10

I want to quickly remind them that the Bethlehem Bible Church website is bbcchurch .org,

01:52:17

bbcchurch .org. And also, No Compromise Radio can be found at nocompromiseradio .com,

01:52:26

nocompromiseradio .com. But if you could close us with about four minutes of your final words.

01:52:32

Well, I would just say this, that, you know, as I think about comparing and contrasting

01:52:38

Mormonism with Biblical Christianity, if you look at Mormonism and it says that, you know, we believe that all mankind may be saved by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel, what does that mean?

01:52:52

And then they explain the things that you have to do. You have to believe, you have to be baptized, you have to, you know, have repentance, and then you have to become a member of the church, they have to give you the

01:53:03

Holy Ghost by laying on of hands. All these things are due. You know, you have to pay a full tithe to go to the temple, you have to obey the

01:53:14

Word of Wisdom, which means you don't drink alcohol, you don't use tobacco, you don't drink caffeinated beverages, you don't, you don't, you don't.

01:53:22

So there's do's and don'ts, a bunch of rules. And here's Biblical Christianity.

01:53:29

Jesus Christ is Biblical Christianity. He obeyed. He did everything that we are commanded to do.

01:53:37

Not all these picayune rules that are made up by men that seem wise to them, these standards that they have created, but what

01:53:46

God actually says. You know, when Jesus says, do not look on a woman with lust, you know, or you've committed adultery, you know, he says, if you get angry with somebody, it's the same as if you killed them.

01:54:01

In other words, he's talking about moral culpability, sin, really giving us an idea of the sinister nature of sin and the pervasive nature of sin.

01:54:12

And that there's nothing we can do about it in and of ourselves. But Jesus Christ obeyed all those, all the law, all the commandments of God, never sinned, never got angry sinfully, never looked at a woman with lust in his heart, fully obeyed, then went to the cross voluntarily.

01:54:32

He could have, being fully God, he didn't have to do that. He sacrificially went to that cross, died for the sins of all who would ever believe, and was raised on the third day.

01:54:46

And it is by faith and by faith alone. And it's only in the scriptures that we can learn about Jesus.

01:54:53

We can't learn anything about him in the Book of Mormon, because it's a fraudulent book. It's only in the

01:55:00

Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, that we learn about the necessity of Jesus Christ, the person and the work of Jesus Christ, and it's only in scripture that we can actually learn the gospel and what

01:55:15

God expects, what he commands, and what he promises to his people. Chris Well, thank you so much,

01:55:22

Steve, for being our guest today on Iron Shepherd's Iron. I look forward to your return as my guest.

01:55:29

And don't forget, folks, that the website for Bethlehem Bible Church is bbcchurch .org, bbcchurch .org.

01:55:36

And also you have nocompromisedradio .com, nocompromisedradio .com. I'm going to close with a song by a dear friend who

01:55:45

I mentioned earlier, Deborah Antignano, who is a Christian recording artist. She is a former

01:55:50

Jehovah's Witness who specifically wrote this song, Captives Be Free, which is basically a tribute to Christ for rescuing her out of the cult of Jehovah's Witnesses.

01:56:03

I thought it was very appropriate to close our program today due to the subject matter at hand with our guest,

01:56:10

Steve Cooley. And I hope that you enjoy it as much as I do. Iron walls to fill the need to be set free.

01:56:49

You want to liberate your mind, controlling secrets, yet you will find the need to be set free.

01:57:14

And the Lord says, Captives be free, just come to me.

01:57:26

I'll break those chains that hold you down.

01:57:34

A life of freedom you've never known. When the

01:57:42

Lord calls you, He is all.

01:57:48

Captives be free. Whenever burdens there may be, the

01:58:04

Lord says, just come to me and I will free you from all you bear.

01:58:17

So are you tired of being in chains?

01:58:26

Bound by shame and bound by pain?

01:58:33

The Lord came to set you free. And the

01:58:44

Lord says, Captives be free, just come to me.

01:58:55

I'll break those chains that hold you down.

01:59:03

A life of freedom you've never known.

01:59:09

When the Lord calls you,

01:59:14

He is all. Captives be free.

01:59:38

I hope you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.